Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday June 22, 2008 @01:52AM
from the all-the-green-words dept.

Ian Lamont writes "Montreal is preparing to launch a Web- and RFID-enabled public bike system that allows residents and visitors to rent bicycles at special depots scattered throughout the city. Using a Web site, riders can check out a real-time inventory of available bicycles at the depot locations. At the depots, a solar-powered base station will process credit cards or member cards. The bike docks use RFID, and the system is supposedly easy to install and maintain. A pilot program will launch in September with four bike depots."

they should just have capacitors (or whatever) on/in the bikes that store up energy whenever brakes are used, then when the bike is returned, all the bikes all stored energy can be released back onto the grid, perhaps which could then be transfered as credit or whatever and give a discount for renting the bike.

heck, maybe if u ride enough you could make money by way of power generation

Some of the biggest issues with public bikes is vandalism, people not returning the bikes or plain old carelessny. Attaching some probably expensive power generrator thingie to the bikes? Bad idea. At a time it was so bad here, they considered making it members only. Not that membership involved much more than basicly getting your personal card, but it'd ruin the use for tourists and such. In the end we didn't have to, but you call tell by the bike type what it's all about. Cheap, sturdy bike with no gears designed for moving in the flat city only, it's as stripped as it gets.

Cheap, sturdy bike with no gears designed for moving in the flat city only, it's as stripped as it gets.

This might make some sense when traveling east-west, but north-south Montreal is far from being a 'flat city', particularly downtown (in the Ville-Marie borough, where one of the four pilot depots is planned). Unless people can shift down to climb hills more easily, won't all the bikes end up at the southernmost depot?

This effect has been noticed in Barcelona.
Despite have a simple gear mechanism (I think it's this one [wikipedia.org], with 3 settings), the higher areas tend to have no bikes and the lower ones no empty spaces to leave them.
However, the bikes are distributed regularly using vans.

To be honest, they have introduced a credit system. Whenever you leave a bike on an uphill depot, you get credited of 15 unmetered minutes for this rental, or any further one. This works only for year-long subscribers, not daily tickets.

I used to race bikes competitively and still do a lot of races. My bike is close-to $3,000. I prefer to ride it over the "cheaper" bikes as its lighter, faster and more agile. Were it not for very aggressive drivers on the road, in a city section I can usually keep pace with cars. IMO, having bikes as a main transportation for the physically able would reduce waist-lines and dependency on oil. It does mean people need to live closer to work and shopping.

they should just have capacitors (or whatever) on/in the bikes that store up energy whenever brakes are used, then when the bike is returned, all the bikes all stored energy can be released back onto the grid, perhaps which could then be transfered as credit or whatever and give a discount for renting the bike.

heck, maybe if u ride enough you could make money by way of power generation

If we're making up dream tech, then they SHOULD have used flying bikes that cure cancer. That's way better.

Winter is only 3 to 4 months out of 12. Montreal is proud of its reputation as one of the largest bicycle friendly cities in the world with over 400 miles (660 km's) of bicycle paths. Bicycling Magazine has named Montreal the number one cycling city (among cities of over one million inhabitants) in North America. We have a lot of people riding bikes regularly as a daily mode of transportation.

the bicycle may not be the best means of transportation in the winter, particularly in Montreal.

I know it's Canada, but they do shovel the streets... particularly downtown

They do indeed shovel the streets here, they shovel all the streets, but it still remains extremely slippery. It's quite a dangerous endeavour to ride bike in Wintertime, and only bike nuts and downtown bicycle couriers do it. Your wheels may suddenly just jerk sideways and completely slip away from under you, slamming you in the ground.

Besides, dangerous or not, riding a bike by minus 10, minus 20 is just very damn uncomfortable. At these temperatures, you already need to dress up considerably just to step outside. To ride a bike, you need double the insulation because of the wind, especially on your face and hands. And pedalling with winter boots on just isn't fun.

> It's quite a dangerous endeavour to ride bike> in Wintertime. Your wheels may suddenly just> jerk sideways and completely slip away from> under you, slamming you in the ground.

I used to ride in Lincoln, Nebraska, when I was in college there. It's not quite as bad as much of Canada probably, but there was certainly snow, and I remember riding in traffic-and-salt-slush. It was a street/racing 14-speed too, not a mountain bike or the like. One just had to be rather more careful. You get used

Yes there exist studded bike tires, I used them this last winter for the first time ever but we got very little snow and cold so it was more annoying than helpful because it put up quite a lot more resistance.

They do indeed shovel the streets here, they shovel all the streets, but it still remains extremely slippery. It's quite a dangerous endeavour to ride bike in Wintertime, and only bike nuts and downtown bicycle couriers do it. Your wheels may suddenly just jerk sideways and completely slip away from under you, slamming you in the ground.

As a nerd recumbent bikes intrest me, but as a Swede trikes intrest me even more, eventually.

I can't decide because I want a fast and technically advanced bike, but a trike would be so awesome during winters because yes, you may slide, but you're not very likely to tilt over and hurt yourself.

There are also some recumbent bikes with windshields as addons and I guess those may help a lot during cold winters if you don't want to freeze your nose.

Of course, no one bothered to point this out to the idjit mayor Tremblay, who decided to invest in building a permanent bike path through the downtown core, which halves parking on a busy main street (de Maisonneuve), while increasing the snow removal costs (a specialized snow plough has to remove the snow from this bike path throughout the winter)... and at the same time, manged to somehow cause massive structural damage to one of the city's underground metro stations.
This bike idea makes sense in the su

Perhaps you have never ridden a bike in the winter, which is why you're such an expert on it? I've never had my wheels "suddenly just jerk sideways". If you have, maybe you're going too fast for the conditions.

Also, you actually have to dress as though it's a lot warmer when winter cycling, because the physical activity makes you very warm very fast. Yes, you need to cover your hands and feet, but there are plenty of ways to do that. I use winter boots, and they work just fine.

I'm not saying it's impossible to ride a bike in Montreal in the winter, I'm just trying to explain why you barely ever see anyone doing it. Or much, much less people, anyway, than during the summer. Which I'm sure you'll agree is true.

When it comes to Montreal, "shovel" is not the word you're looking for. In Montreal they just throw salt everywhere and hope the problem takes care of itself, but instead you end up three inches of slush everywhere.

Montreal is extraordinarily slippery in the winter, and I wouldn't want to ride a bike there.

It sounds awfully like... exactly the same thing. But in Paris you can use them 12 months a year. In Montreal, as soon as the ground ice-freezes or more than 50cm of snow accumulates, the bikes will basically become useless.

Paris wasn't the first city in France to implement those (unless you count the RATP short-lived bike rental service, with probably a total of fifty bikes in the entire city at its peak). Lyon at least predated Vélib with its Vélov system. Yeah, dunno why the apostrophe trend.

The project currently being pushed by Delanoë (mayor of Paris) is also noteworthy : the goal is to have the same system as Vélib, but with cars. Dunno if it will work as well, though, since you still need a l

Exactly. Looks like Montreal is getting yet another system similar to Paris Velib [wikipedia.org], Barelona Bicing, Stockholm City Bikes [wikipedia.org], and others... Except this one will be buried in snow from November to April.

Trondheim, Norway had a similar system when I was there in 1998, not sure if it is older than that.

At 63.4 degrees North, I think those would also also qualify for the winter part.

Sorry about replying to myself, poor form I know, but this ladies and gentlemen is what the preview button is for: checking that you closed your tags properly. "System" was all that should have been italicised.

And all they have to do, with their little computerized system, is to make sure that the supply is low enough at key spots to keep the rental price high. What a scam.

By the way, someone mentioned that Montreal keeps its road plowed. That does not much matter, since a snow plow often makes the road slicker than leaving some powder snow alone. On the other hand, I do not believe that there are any logical objections to using bicycles that have walnut-shell or metal-studded tires.

Objections to using them? No. Reasons to think anyone doing it is fucking insane? Yes. Of course you have a screw loose to be biking on a busy non-residential street anyway- you're a vehicle weighing maybe 250 lbs, traveling with vehicles weighing half a ton, with limited maneuverability, lower speed, and balance issues. You're hard to see, increasing the likelihood of accidents. On top of that, you're going at half the speed of the cars, which in any type of traffic just pisses people off- and it c

"Limited mobility" doesn't mean "completely immobile". I, for example, have some orthopedic problems that make it really painful to walk further than about a mile or stand on my feet for more than an hour at a time. A bicycle would greatly extend my range by taking most of the strain off my feet.

(Of course, I don't really have anywhere to store one, and the hills around here are bastards, but that's a whole other subject...)

With the resultant dropped foot, and missing muscles, standing is torture, much sooner than the OP's note, and walking several miles used to result in a squishy sound from a right sneaker full of blood, but guess what, Mr. Clueless re:Physics? At the same time I was riding a Trek

Yup, making the species real proud there, crippy.Your mind seems as functional as your limbs. Good thing for you that worthwhile organisms made rolling machines to replace your legs, and word processing machines to replace your brain.

Wastes of skin like you must be happy you're not thrown off a cliff, as you ought to. But we real people sure could do without your kind.

As the poster above me mentioned, just because someone has impaired mobility, doesn't mean they can't use a bike. I know multiple people who have trouble walking more than a few blocks or standing stationary. Yet, they can ride the bicycle for miles and miles. In fact, some of them probably do more miles in a year than the average person does ever.

For them the bicycle is a real mobility aid. If they didn't have it they would be reduced to a wheelchair, walker, or possibly one of those electric scooters.

it's also possible the bicycles could be the three wheeled variety. I see them around these parts from time to time for people that can't stand for long periods of time. Usually a large basket on the front too so they can do minor shopping etc.

I was also very surprised to see TWO bikes in the last month being ridden by paraplegics. (no legs) The bikes look a bit like recumbents in that their seat is very close to the ground. The energy is supplied by a cam system on the handlebars, which moves back and forth in addition to twisting for steering. The forward and backward motion moves the bike. Those two had some serious muscle in their arms, and could easily keep pace with others. Beats the heck out of a wheelchair and is an uplifting sight to see on the bicycle trails.

You are not forced to go both ways by bike. You can cycle to town, the get a tram, tube, taxi etc home later if you want to.

You dont spend 20mins trying to find parking for your car

You dont spend 10mins waiting for a tram

You can go directions where public transport might not go directly

It only costs 70kr/year which is about $14 as the bikes and bikesheds are sponsored with ads.

The system here also has a realtime website with status of their 90ish depots/bikesheds. And if the one you are at is empty, then the screen lists the status of nearby depots.

There are some drawbacks with the free city bikes:

It is too popular, often the bike rails are empty

People tend to go the same directions/places at the same time. So even with trucks driving around to redistribute the bikes, the ones on the city centre limits are during day time often empty and the ones in the centre are full.

Even with constant maintenance some of the bikes have taken a beating

Some people steal the free city bikes. Makes no sense to me, as they are virtually free.

So I fully recommend them, it has made us get about town so much easier and quicker (and thus more often), but they are only useful if the depots are everywhere and stocked up.

Have you seen how successful the public bicycle system is in Paris? It's a generation older in terms of tech, but it continues to be a great success. Being able to simply grab (rent) a bike and ride the 15-20 blocks you might need to travel, doing this above ground in a physically exhilarating and liberating fashion (compared to a bus/metro/taxi)... this is all most excellent.

The geek criticism of this technology for its "privacy concerns" and for its "technological weak points" is probably all logically sound. But the very same people who are making these points are also very likely the most keyboard-bound (by habit) people. They are perhaps failing to see the practical gains here, in favor of racing to point out academic faults. To them I say:

Dude! If ever anyone needed a digital rent-a-bike to get you off your ass, it's you! Who do you think they are making this for? It's not the carousing moron with bad credit and too many kids. It's not Dr. MD-PhD who drives to his practice to check his schedule for next week. It's you, pal.

Being able to simply grab (rent) a bike and ride the 15-20 blocks you might need to travel, doing this above ground in a physically exhilarating and liberating fashion (compared to a bus/metro/taxi)... this is all most excellent.

Ah, no thanks, especially considering the air pollution you get in a densely-populated city like Paris with all that automobile, truck and bus traffic. I'll wait until every vehicle on Paris streets are either Euro 6 emissions-compliant, run off natural gas, are hybrids/plug-in hybr

Ah, no thanks, especially considering the air pollution you get in a densely-populated city like Paris with all that automobile, truck and bus traffic. I'll wait until every vehicle on Paris streets are either Euro 6 emissions-compliant, run off natural gas, are hybrids/plug-in hybrids and/or all-electric.

Well, reducing traffic pollution is kind of the entire point of the Vélib system, isn't it ? I'd say bikes are Euro 6 emissions-compliant. And natural gas is a hazard in closed car parks, of which there are quite a few in the city.

While buses and delivery trucks are going to clean-burning CNG in Paris, you still have the problem of a lot of automobiles fuelled by diesel fuel, and unlike the USA, European diesel emission standards are nowhere as strict as in the USA. Given the huge amount of new cars sold in Europe with diesel engines, they need to make them much cleaner in terms of NOx and diesel particulate output to reduce the serious air pollution problems in cities.

From your post, I'm going to make the assumption that you've never been to Paris.

Whilst there is traffic in Paris, as with every city - not everyone owns a car.Public transport is highly convenient, and heavily utilised.Parking is expensive, petrol is hard to source in the city, and having a garage where you live is next to impossible.

Drivers are very conscientious of bicycles, and all in all, as per the parent poster, it's a really exhilirating and relaxing experience.

It will be the 1 year anniversary of the Velib system in Paris in a few weeks time.I was looking at the figures the other day - there are over 20,000 bikes now [100% more than when launched] - and 1,450 stations.

It seems to be a very mixed demographic that uses them - you'll see a lot of students, and a lot of older folk as well.From my point of view, there definitely seem to be less tourists using them - it may catch on though.

The system, however, is fantastic. Most people over here don't have enough space to have their own bike, and being able to grab one to ride to a friend's house, or shorten a walk home, or simply take advantage of a sunny day, for 1 Euro - fantastic.

Having lived in Montreal for many years I can tell you their so-called great system sucks.

The average road size in downtown Montreal is two lanes plus one parking lane. Parking is already impossible to find and one out of the two driving lanes is almost always blocked by construction, delivery trucks or some driver taking a left turn. So you're already down to one usable lane.

Now these idiots come along and pave *permanent* bike lanes (enforced with a concrete separator) in a country that sees Winter 3/4th

That's a kind of funny comment seeing how bikers were busy running down pedestrians before they were pushed into the roads. I guess pedestrians are nazis too eh?

There is a time and a place for cars, bikes, and pedestrians. The current arrangement is very poorly planned and makes everyone pretty miserable but I guess that is consistent with Montreal's "great" road-planning, where the same road gets paved 2-3 times the same year while somehow developing 10x more pot holes than any surrounding province and sta

We've got something similar here in Buffalo. Members can check out a bike from the web site and return it to any of the "hubs" around town, and then check it back in.

The biggest thing people always worry about is theft, but since the work is all done by volunteers and the bikes are all donations or cheapies from police auction, someone would have to steal a half-dozen bikes a year to eclipse their $15 membership fee.

I mean they're not going to put sensors everywhere in the city to track them everywhere but I bet they could sell the data of routes people take and sell the stats to businesses. That or follow "suspicious" people who haven't even committed a crime.

I mean, nobody who is about to commit a crime is going to make sure they aren't traced by stealing a bike or maybe using a false credit card or possibly thinking for three seconds before they commit the crime.

Up here in Ottawa, the Tory douchebags passed a bill to install surveillance cams in taxis, "to protect patrons and drivers" they say.

Knowing the average IQ of a taxi business owner/manager, I can guarantee you these will be misused in every way imaginable. For entertainment (check out the jugs on that one), for profit (thank you mr crooked cop), or even to blackmail people (who's that woman you were with - not your wife!).

Frankly, I think we should revert to times past, when people weren't so paranoid and

They don't have to. What you don't know is that the first thing the taxi drivers do, when they get your cash, is take your fingerprint off the cash (bills or coins, although admittedly, it's easier with coins), and they report those to FBI at the end of the day.

Have you ever touched a door handle? Then the Big Brother knows where you are, and, yes, he's watching you---if he needed a camera to know what you are doing, he wouldn't be the Big Brother.

The thing about this tracking however, is that it's opt-in. If you don't like them knowing where you'll be taking their bike, don't rent one and get on the bus instead. Far less personal information traded with the bus, especially if you pay per ride in cash. But having other people using the bikes is just fine for the bus goers. It means the buses will be potentially less crowded.

That's rather unfortunate for you. But a cyclist is a pedestrian, and they ALWAYS have the right of way. Car drivers can go drive on an interstate (or whatever they call those in canada) if they don't like having to share the road.

At least where I'm from, (the UK), it's illegal to cycle on the pavement. By law, cyclists have to share the road with motorists and follow all the same rules. Of course this isn't necessarily a good law - see my post below.

Indeed, it is the same here in Canada. You're not supposed to ride on the sidewalk if your wheels are over a certain size (i.e. kids are still allowed to ride on the sidewalk) and you're supposed to signal and obey all traffic laws.

Maybe the cyclists have to do this sort of thing to avoid getting killed by unfriendly motorists? You take every chance you have to get ahead of the traffic, or better yet out of its way entirely. You take your life in your hands if you don't.

There's been a bit of discussion about this in London since David Cameron, (the leader of the main opposition party), was caught cycling the wrong way down a one way street. Of course many people had a go at him for it, but cycling organisations defended him for the

That, and if anyone thinks that every bus, train, and probably even every cab (even though they're private) in the greater San Francisco area aren't carefully tracked, you're dreaming. This is no different. It's just individual bikes, rather than a group transit.

What's your point? They can also track rental cars and car-shares, as well as transit cards, airline tickets, purchase histories, library books, medical records, ip addresses, etc... This is a simple fact of the technological, networked society we live in. We can't avoid bicycles, cars, trains, planes, stores, libraries, hospitals and computers because of it - we just have to try and find our way to craft a society in which these abilities are not abused.

I have an idea. Let's all buy these big metal boxes that do not have RFID but are visible from satellites in outer space and often have multiple cell phones in them at all times. We can drive them around all day. Nobody will see us then at all.
All we would need to do to make this work is to find some dead animals that have been stuck under ground for thousands of years and process them into black goo. We can base our entire society on it and then we can start wars by convincing TV viewers that everyth

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at with your sardonic comment...

If we don't want our bikes to be tracked by RFID, then the only other choice is to support the oil industry?

Personally I don't mind the idea of having the bikes tracked using RFID. As long as the information was being used for good purposes, then all is well. RFID could prevent bike thefts, help city planners choose locations for new bike paths, allow for a web-based system to automatically let users know where bikes are availab

"Tracked" by RFID? Do you know anything about RFID? It sucks balls for tracking things, especially outdoors... TFA suggests (quite logically) that the RFID only detects if the bike is in the rack.
I swear, libertarians see RFID and they assume it's already measuring their heartbeat or reading their mind...

"Tracked" by RFID? Do you know anything about RFID? It sucks balls for tracking things, especially outdoors... TFA suggests (quite logically) that the RFID only detects if the bike is in the rack. I swear, libertarians see RFID and they assume it's already measuring their heartbeat or reading their mind...

A couple points...

First, the article claims that the technology will be used to help monitor traffic usage. One could assume that this was merely at the docking stations, but it could be used outside

There must be some system implemented for preventing the bikes from getting stolen. We have a similar system in Vienna, Austria; when it first started off a couple of years back, the bikes were chained onto bicycle racks and could be unlocked like a shopping trolley with a 2 Euro coin (which would be refunded as soon as the bike was returned to a rack again). However within a couple of weeks virtually all bikes had been stolen and sold in other countries. The system was later reimplemented using credit card verification, and now works quite successfully.

I'm sure the people in charge of this project in Montreal would have looked at examples from other cities where these systems already exist, and deemed this sort of protection necessary, there's no need to get all worked up about it being some huge conspiracy to track citizens around the city, after all, it's mostly used by people enjoying a quiet stroll around the city on a nice day, I doubt much confidential information can be extracted by tracking bikes driving through parks.

A similar system has been in place in Barcelona for a couple of years now, it's called bicing [bicing.com].
The system doesn't explicitly track the bikes, but knows on which station is each bike, or if it is in use, which user has it.
The most you could get is a database of points between which each user moves. For example, I mostly move between two stations: one next to the train station and one next to my working place.
The linking between the bike and the user is to enforce a maximum time of use, after which an ec

Why is everyone so concerned about people knowing where they go? Who cares? You went to work. Don't care. You went shopping. Don't care. You went to a strip joint. Still don't care. Gay bathhouse, don't care.
Perhaps those so concerned with being tracked are actually those with the greatest interest in the lives of others.